“Hey, pal. Is that Wu Chow you’ve got there?”
He lifts one of the many sacks he’s holding and smiles. “Yeah. Lots of it. You Elijah?”
“That’s me. Listen, there’s another tip in it for you if you can take it to my girlfriend’s door and, when she moves to set the first set of bags inside the apartment, I want you to signal me and step back away from the door.”
The boy’s face falls. He definitely has me pegged as a jilted lover at best and a serial unaliver at worst. “Whoa, wait. It’s nothing like that. I messed up this morning, and I left here in kind of a tantrum. She’s mad at me, and I want to fix it with Chinese food and some groveling, but I’m pretty sure she won’t let me get past the door. Can you help me out? I swear I would never hurt her.”
He doesn’t look any less wary. I scrub my face with my hands. The license thing worked for me once.It’s worth a shot.My worn-out leather wallet falls open easily, and I hand the kid a crisp hundred before handing him my license.
“This is my license. See? That’s me.” I point to the picture on the ID. “You can take a picture of it if you want. Now, would I be willing to show you my license if I planned to do something nefarious to my girlfriend?”
The boy’s eyes narrow in confusion, and I’m not sure where I lost him. “You okay?”
“What’s nefarious?”
I smile at the kid.I like him already. He’s got a hundred-dollar bill in his hand, and he’s still information gathering. “Nefarious means bad or criminal. I was just saying that I wouldn’t provide you with my picture, name, and home address if I planned to do anything here that I shouldn’t.”
He nods and stares at my license. Putting the bags down on the ground, he pulls out his phone to take the picture.This guy isn’t messing around.I chuckle inwardly. He hands the license back to me.
“So, do we have a deal?”
“Deal.”
I punch the air and punctuate it with a “Yes.”
The boy walks up the stairs with the bags and knocks on the door. Vaughn calls out through the door. “Wrong door. I didn’t order anything.”
“Uh, yeah. Apartment number sixteen. There’s a message in the notes that says, ‘From Elijah. Please forgive me.’”
Several seconds pass without any response from Vaughn. Eventually, I hear the chain rattle and then the deadbolt clicks. I can’t see her, but I hear her say, “Is that from Wu Chow?”
“Yes ma’am. It’s a lot of food. Do you mind if I hand you some of it?”
“Oh gosh. Yeah. Sorry.”
Her slender hands reach out as the boy hands her two overfilled bags. It’s in this moment that he turns to look at me, stepping back from the door.My moment. The signal. Racing up the concrete stairs, my footfalls barely make a sound.Stealth training is serving me well today.
Once at the door, I see Vaughn walking toward the kitchen with her back to me. I dart inside, racing straight through the living room and past her into the hall. She doesn’t seem to notice me as she’s placing the bags on the kitchen counter. The kitchen is decorated in a random assortment of things in hot pink and bright orange. This includes a shiny orange bust of a horned duck on the wall above the stove. The refrigerator is absolutely littered with notes and pictures affixed by brightly colored magnets. One magnet with large lettering says, ‘saying my truth, is a funny way to preface bullshit’.
Standing in the narrow hallway, I see everything in the apartment from this vantage point. The floor plan is a fairly open concept. Vaughn’s bedroom door is to my left. I’m not sure where the door on the right leads. The other door is partially open, so I can see that it’s a bathroom. The dining area, kitchen, and living area are all open. There’s only a half wall that’s more of a bar top separating the living room from the kitchen. The eclectic style I saw in her bedroom is pretty steady throughout the apartment. There’s no real theme apart random and bright.
Vaughn walks back to the door and grabs the other two bags from the boy.
“Thank you so much”, she tells him as she attempts to hand him a tip. The boy looks down at the tip in her hand. He’s obviously feeling conflicted.Damn it.I can see it the moment his mind is made up.The little shit’s going to rat me out.He looks up, and his eyes meet mine. The resolve in them is as clear as words written in a book.
“I did what I said I would do. I never said I wouldn’t tell her.”
Vaughn slowly turns in the direction the boy is looking. Her face becomes a rainbow of emotions. At first, her expression is confused when she turns to see me standing here. I was obviously going to reveal myself, but not quite yet. The boy skipped ahead a few steps. My hope was that she would be knee-deep in dumplings and wontons and too high on MSG to kick me out. The twins told me that Wu Chow’s food would work in my favor. It apparently takes some of the venom out of her. Her sultry brown eyes are filled with confusion, then incredulity, then...ah shit. This is the venom they warned me about.She hasn’t eaten the food yet!Damn it!She’s going to flay a piece of my flesh off.Maybe I can pick the piece? I’m quite partial to certain bits.I can see it right there in her blazing hot gaze. The confident outrage. On an anger scale from Mr. Rogers to Mr. Hyde, I would place her somewhere in the neighborhood of Cujo.
I look past her and watch the boy give me a half grin and a lazy salute before he turns and leaves.Fucking Judas.Somehow, it makes me like the little asshole even more, though. He’s not willing to leave a woman alone and unaware of an intruder.I wonder what he would’ve done if she had reacted differently. If she had been scared instead of venomous, I might have had another fight on my hands.
Chapter 8
Elijah
“Are you insane?” Vaughn’s words snap me back to the moment.
My hands shoot up, palms out, attempting to convey that I mean no harm, but it soon becomes quite obvious that she isn’t at all afraid of me when she quickly stalks toward me, aggressively swaying her perfect hips with every step. Her footfalls are so swift and confident that the previously five feet six inches of her has seemed to expand to something closer to six feet. She immediately has me backing down the hallway in retreat from the blistering heat rolling off her in waves.
